Focus Confidence Momentum

On a recent holiday in Ireland I met Derry, a dairy farmer, from whom I learned more about ‘passengers’, a topic I’ve mentioned before.

Derry raises and sells cows. To be profitable in that business it is necessary to invest expensive resources, like food, on the most valuable cows and cull the rest of the herd.

Of interest to me, Derry used the word ‘passengers’ to identify the cows that were culled.

I’ve used ‘passengers’ in a human resources context in the past. I learned from David Ogilvy, early in my career, to separate passengers without delay. That is, to fire employees who were not good enough in order to surround yourself with employees who are uniformly good. You can read about this concept in David’s book Confessions of an Advertising Man.

The opportunity for you, whether employee or manager or self-employed is to identify what is a passenger for you and to rid yourself of it.

I’ve expanded to definition of passenger to include more than just employees. I think it means anything or anyone that takes up your time in less than the best way. Here are some ideas of passengers I’ve thought about:

* Committee or organizational work, volunteer or otherwise, that is not giving you the kind of satisfaction you want. Quitting these groups is a way of separating a passenger.
* Doing work yourself that can be delegated.
* Allowing a mess in your life to continue to haunt you. Messes can be environmental, financial, administrative, relationship, health or legal.
* Procrastinating on projects that can be done sooner.

Here are two more that readers of my e-newsletter suggested.

* Inner voices that sabotage action.
* Helping people who don’t want to be helped.